Life Happens

It was interesting, going back and reading the last post I made before our trip (Why I Want a Wife) before I make the first post since being back. And as I sat down a few days ago to start this post, I realized how connected the two are. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my life, my children, my marriage, my house, etc. Well, ok, there is. BUT what I mean is that none of the wrong with these things can have any impact up on my heart unless I let it.

But there IS something wrong with my own way of thinking, and I have been struggling to figure out exactly what. Something clicked when I re-read the last two postings and now I see one important idea underlying both postings that had not yet registered in my thinking and so I could not express coherently. Like it or not, I am the heart of the household and the home. I am a tree that in its own gnarled and bent beauty can produce life-giving fruit--or can be cordwood. I am a garden of potential, the springtime hope of autumn bounty--and it feels like Spring is almost over, quick let's finish the planting! I am a very crazy quilt, the kind that was sewn and knotted by less than capable hands, an embarassing hodge-podge of remmnants--sheeny silk scrap and rough nub of 60's polyester and faded demin of grandpa's worn-out overalls and vintage cherry print of grandma's kitchen curtains--but which is still the one you reach for when you want to cuddle on the couch and nurse the flu or a bad breakup. I am all kinds of overused homey mothering cliches--the ones at which we roll our eyes, usually because we don't want to invest the time and effort to become them and so must flippantly discard them before they make us feel guilty.

But I am so desperate for wisdom now--in homemaking, in homeschooling, in child-rearing, in spiritual development--that I find it popping up everywhere, little tidbits of Truth waiting to be recognized for what they are. So I am all about the tired cliches right now--and the overused metaphors, as you can tell. ; ) But I am trying to see them anew, deconstruct them in my own understanding, recontstruct them into something tangible, helpful, hopeful. The crazy quilt image works really well here too.

And it is amazing how God is pulling little random bits of other people's stories together for me, to encourage and convict me. For example, the movie "Rachel Getting Married" (which I downloaded from Netflix the other night) was a hugely emotional experience--not only because the acting was SO real it was like watching a painful family conflict really unfold (the most real characterization I have seen since "Once"), but also because I responded as a mother to the heart Truth of a tragedy in the plot--the wrongful death of an innocent 3 year old boy--that is pivotal to the hurt and anger and guilt experienced by the characters in the movie. Considering the imaginary, but oh-so possible reality in that tragedy made me cherish my children anew.

Then another morning I came across a little fluffy human interest news video, of a family who has 18 children and is about to add one more. The parents seem like truly joyful, sane people, and said they firmly believe that children are a blessing. One of their oldest children is a young man who is himself expecting his first child with his wife, and when the interviewer asked him something about how he felt about his wife and mom having babies within the same year, he managed to get in a good word about God's provision and wisdom. (he did it by slipping the God talk into the middle of his answer to the interviewer and not the end, where it could be edited out later--take that, godless corporate censors!)

And then just a little later the same day, I finally went to a blog that my friend Susan had told me about, of another God-loving mom who has 13 children: http://weloveyoujoel.blogspot.com/. (If it sounds like I have been online a lot, that is my activity of choice while nursing--E is too old to wave books in front of, and laying down just makes me want to nap, badly ; ) Scrolling down a few entries in this blog, I came upon this:

"For such is kingdom of heaven"......there are so many entering there even daily...little children. Please pray for this very young couple/family, they have two year old twins boy/girl and the Lord took them to his heaven at the end of July. A terrible drowning accident. So today if you find yourself complaining, stumbling over toys, murmering of all they did not do.....remember this mother whose house is quiet, who would long for all that we sometimes complain about.

That is exactly the thing that God seems to be pounding into my heart this week. That we MUST enjoy every minute with our children--that we never know when things will change, when life will seem to veer off course in a disasterous way and we are left reeling from absence of a loved one, of rightness, of what we thought would always be "normalacy." These days, with my children home will not be forever. If I am fortunate, they will last as long as my children are little. The hard things are only going to get easier--once E can use the potty by himself and no more cloth diapers hanging on the line, once the girls can all read and do schoolwork more independently, once they are old enough to do things for themselves like their own ponytails and pouring of milk from the full gallon jug, once they are old enough to help me around the house even more than they are already starting to do. There will of course be new hard things at every different age, but I won't even begin to think about those now--as the Scripture says, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." Amen! But the point is just to focus on today, and make the most of today. Love as fully as I can today. Appreciate each of my children today, and let them know it. Use my hands in the service of love, as a gift to Christ, for who knows how long I will be able to do so.

See, lots more cliches--lots more bits of Truth.

To finally drive these ideas home, just now as I sat down to nurse (I have been composing this post over the course of several days--lots of nursing and browsing in between!) and saw a news article about the trial for the kidnapper/killer of a young woman (I missed hearing about it when it happened). The article gave a poignant description of the woman through the eyes of her husband and father, but the details that really made me heart sick were these: that she was the mother of two small boys, one she was nursing and one she was pottytraining. She was doing these necessary, loving things for her little ones, and was taken from her home despite it. She probably went with her kidnapper so that he would not hurt her little ones. Motherhood is no protection from cruelty and unfairness--it just makes them all the more painful, sacrilegious.

Bad things are going to happen in life. If I am fortunate, I will be able to rear my children to adulthood. But maybe I won't. Maybe we will have the luxury of homeschooling for as long as it is working for our family. But maybe we won't. Maybe we will be in this dinky house we love for years to come, always managing by the grace of God to make it work. Maybe we won't.

And so, this week, I see the solution for my heart-issue with being exasperated so quickly with my house, my husband, my children, my work. I wrote earlier about my almost continual but completely sinful desire to escape from my daily life--and wondered how I could change my way of thinking. It is this: the opposite of escape is immersion. Attempting to flee from life is impossible and, as a mom, can only lead to all manner of chaos and atrophy and futility and despair. I have known this in my mind, but had a hard time connecting it to my heart. Now I see the flipped, positive side of the same coin--not just accepting, but embracing the toil and tears and frustration and monotony and living, loving, *being* with my whole self in that moment; this is where I will find peace. Purpose. The desire to escape is a lie that some evil minion uses to temp me away from the reality, the Truth of my own life. Because, really, where would I go? With whom? Wouldn't I choose this place, these people? Yes, actually. (Just neater. And cleaner. And without the fussing. ; ) And what would I do once I escaped? Have all the time I want to focus on no one but myself. And I will get to do that someday, most likely, when the kids are all grown and gone. And when that moment comes and I find myself yearning for the olden days when the kids were sprawled around the house coloring and dancing and reading and playing and talking my ear off--that is when Satan will have a big laugh at my expense. Or that moment could come sooner, in a more unnatural, shocking way, if I lost any of my children or my husband. I don't want to regret how I lived and loved.

A song is suddenly coming to mind, "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones:

I was alive and I waited, waited

I was alive and I waited for this

Right here, right now

There is no other place I want to be

And how even more appropriate to remember that the song came out when the Berlin wall was being torn down--Lord, please tear down in me whatever walls I have been building up between my inner self and my family, my domestic life. They don't protect some sacred inner self from loss of identity through motherhood--they chain me to my own selfish desires, which will always, only lead me to a wasteland of parched, barren heartlessness. I am at my end nothing but dust, and it chokes in my throat. I am done serving me; please help me serve You and love You, by serving those whom You love, and have given me to love.

(The cool photos were taken a year ago, by the talented Willow)